Warehouse 13: A Touch of Fever (2 page)

Figures,
he thought. The next stop on his tour of the museum would have to be something called the Hall of Infamy.
How come Artie never sends us to All-You-Can-Eat Cookies instead?

Still, duty called. Pete took a deep breath, then unhooked the chain blocking the way. Drawing back the curtain, he stepped cautiously into the hall, which turned out to be a wax museum honoring the most notorious pirates of fact and fiction. Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Black Bart, Long John Silver, Captain Hook, Jean Lafitte, and about a dozen other legendary cutthroats and marauders were posed along both sides of a long, carpeted hallway, their molded features leering at Pete as he made his way down the carpet, past the still and silent buccaneers. Glass eyes and bloodstained cutlasses reflected the glow of the flashlight. Red fiber-optic fuses infested Blackbeard’s bushy whiskers. A stuffed parrot perched atop Silver’s shoulder. Treasure chests, cannonballs, anchors, and other props added to the maritime decor. Pete felt like he was running some sort of nautical gauntlet—or maybe walking the plank.

Yo, ho, ho,
he thought wryly.
I’ll pass on the bottle of rum.

Doing his best to ignore the sinister figures, he finally stumbled onto his destination: a life-size replica of Charleston’s most scandalous daughter: Anne Bonny.

The celebrated female pirate occupied a place of honor at the end of the hall. A tricorn hat topped a mane of wild red hair. A man’s blue frock coat, a striped shirt, and canvas trousers failed to conceal her shapely figure. A red silk cravat, knotted around her neck, added a touch of color to her ensemble. A flintlock pistol was tucked into her belt. Striking green eyes gleamed with bloodlust and avarice. Her crimson lips were curled in a sneer.

“Hello, Annie,” Pete whispered. He recognized her from Artie’s briefing back at the Warehouse. The real Anne Bonny had been a bored young wife who had run off to sea to pursue a life of piracy nearly three hundred years ago. Along with her lover, “Calico” Jack Rackham, she had terrorized the Caribbean before being captured by the British navy way back in 1720. Legend had it that she had fought like a hellcat to the very end. Looking at her fierce expression, Pete could believe it.

He lifted his gaze. Anne’s right arm was raised high, the better to deliver a fatal blow to the unlucky seaman cowering at her feet. There was just one problem: her wax fingers were empty. The bloody cutlass was missing.

Crap,
Pete thought.
That isn’t good.

All of a sudden, his goose bumps had goose bumps.

“Where is the trader of London town? His gold’s on the capstan, his blood’s on his gown.”
A singsong voice, carrying an old sea chantey, issued from the shadows surrounding Pete.
“And it’s up and away for St. Mary’s Bay, where the liquor is good and the laddies are gay. . . .”

What the heck? He spun around, searching for the source of the lilting voice, which echoed eerily off the walls of the spooky wax museum. His flashlight probed the darkness but could not immediately locate the unseen singer amidst the looming wax pirates. The chantey seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at the same time.

“Farewell to Port Royal, the stink and the crowds. There’s blood in the scuppers and wind in the shrouds. . . .”

“Hello? Is someone there?”

He reached instinctively for his Tesla gun, only to remember that it was Myka’s turn to carry the high-tech sidearm. All he had was an ordinary semiautomatic. Damn.

“Myka? I could use a little help here?”

His vibe detector was on high alert. He could practically feel hostile eyes scoping him out. Chills ran up and down his spine like an express elevator. His gut twisted itself into knots. Adrenaline primed him for action.

And none too soon. A rustling sound behind him alerted him to danger, and he dived for safety even as a dimly glimpsed figure charged from between a wax pirate and his booty. A gleaming cutlass sliced through the empty space Pete’s head had occupied only seconds before. He rolled across the carpet and sprang to his feet just in time to see the polished steel blade connect with a waxworks version of Calico Jack instead.

Whoosh! In a blur of motion, the cutlass appeared to deliver fifty blows with a single swing. The air sounded like it was being churned up by a blender. One minute, Jack Rackham was striking a dashing pose in his brightly colored calico vest, the very picture of a rakish pirate captain; a second later the unlucky statue had been reduced to nothing more than a pile of shredded fabric and wax shavings. Paper-thin flakes wafted down onto the carpet. A glass eye rolled across the floor.

“Whoa!” Pete exclaimed. He scrambled backward, bumping into a rusty iron cannon. The beam of his flashlight swung upward, exposing his attacker: a blond woman clutching Anne Bonny’s missing cutlass. He recognized her as Lainie Evers, a tour guide who worked at the museum. He and Myka had met her briefly when they were casing the place earlier today.

The formerly helpful guide was still dressed for work, looking like a theme-park version of a stylish female pirate. A plastic name badge was pinned to a ruffled white blouse. A laced red corset cinched her waist, above a black skirt and knee-high boots. A skull-and-crossbones motif was printed on the skirt. More like a Halloween costume than authentic pirate garb, in other words.

The cutlass, on the other hand, was the real deal.

Snarling, Lainie wheeled around to confront Pete, who put the cannon between himself and the sword-wielding guide. Crazed eyes and contorted features mimicked Anne Bonny’s savage expression. She spit venomously at Pete.

“Fight like a man, you scurvy rogue, or die like a dog!”

Wow,
Pete thought.
Somebody’s swash is buckled a little too tightly.

The cutlass was obviously messing with her head. As Pete knew too well, certain historical artifacts could become imbued with powerful tangential energies stemming from past owners and events—with bizarre, unpredictable results. Pete had hoped that he and Myka could get their hands on the cutlass before it stirred up any trouble, but clearly their timing sucked. The sword already had Lainie in its spell.

“Hey! Unshiver your timbers, lady!” He tried to talk her down. “You’re not thinking straight. . . .”

“Belay that! A short life and a merry one, I say. Especially for you!”

She lunged at Pete, hacking wildly. The flashing cutlass struck sparks off the cannon as he ducked away from the multiplying blows. “Not really feeling the merry right now.” He reached again for his gun, but reconsidered. Lainie was an innocent victim here; she wasn’t herself. No way did he want to resort to deadly force.

Too bad she didn’t feel the same way.

“Stand still, you villainous cur. Or I’ll slip ye the Black Spot!”

Uh-huh,
he thought.
Not going to happen.

Dousing his flashlight, he retreated from the possessed guide, trying to blend in with Captain Kidd and the others. By now his eyes had partially adjusted to the dark, and he could dimly make out Lainie stalking up and down the red carpet, cursing profanely in a manner that would have seared the tender ears of any grade-school kids visiting the museum on a field trip. Pete assumed she didn’t use that sort of language during business hours.

She slashed at the air, slicing it to ribbons. Whistling repeatedly with every swipe, the cutlass keened like a chorus of dying men. No doubt it had claimed the lives of many sailors during Anne Bonny’s bloody heyday. Pete considered his options. Reasoning with Lainie appeared to be a lost cause; the cutlass’s influence was too strong. He needed to get the sword out of her grip—and vice versa.

Ideally without getting turned into confetti in the process.

Moving as stealthily as he could, he circled behind her. Decorative cables and anchors threatened to trip him up, but he somehow managed to skirt around the edges of the exhibit without knocking anything over or getting tangled in the mock rigging. Creeping out from behind a painted wooden figurehead in the likeness of a busty mermaid, he snuck up behind Lainie, hefting his flashlight like a bludgeon. His eyes zeroed in on the back of her skull. All he needed to do was knock her out long enough to separate her from the cutlass and neutralize it. With any luck, she wouldn’t remember any of this.

Lainie was only a few paces ahead of him. Her blond hair was tied back in a pigtail. He raised the flashlight.

Sorry ’bout this,
he thought in advance.
The aspirin’s on me.

Before he could make his move, however, a harsh electronic buzz emanated from his jacket’s inner pocket. Pete felt the Farnsworth vibrate insistently—at the worst possible moment.

Not now, Artie!

But it was already too late. The jarring signal alerted Lainie, who whirled about, swinging the cutlass in a deadly arc. Pete threw himself backward barely in time to avoid getting disemboweled. The tip of the blade shredded the front of his shirt, sending threads and buttons flying, but just missing the skin underneath. The close call sent his heart racing. Ignoring the persistent buzzing from his pocket, he took cover behind the carved wooden mermaid. He glanced down at the tattered fabric in shock. “Hey,” he protested. “I
liked
that shirt!”

Lainie didn’t care.

“Avast, ye filthy bilge rat! I’ll feed your salty guts to the sharks!”

She came at him with a vengeance. The cutlass hacked away at the figurehead like a chain saw in disguise. Wood chips and splinters pelted Pete’s face. The makeshift barricade was being whittled away right before his eyes. In seconds, there would be nothing left of the mermaid but a toothpick. He backed into the wall behind him. Lainie had him cornered.

He reached for his gun. Could he really bring himself to shoot an innocent victim?

“Sorry. That’s my partner you’re trying to turn into fish food,” a familiar voice called out from the opposite end of the hall. Myka Bering appeared in the doorway. The tall brunette aimed an exotic-looking handgun at Lainie. The weapon looked like something from an earlier century, all polished brass and crystal, in contrast to her black blazer and slacks. Copper coils and batteries glowed inside its transparent barrel. Miniature gauges monitored its charge. Myka’s stern tone made it clear that she meant business. “Feeding time is over. Hand over the cutlass.”

“Never! I’ll send ye down to Davy Jones’s locker ’fore I surrender me blade, you poxy wench!”

Waving her cutlass, Lainie charged at Myka. Pete opened his mouth to warn his partner of the sword’s rapid-fire capacity, but he needn’t have bothered. A bolt of crackling blue electricity shot from the muzzle of the pistol, which had been designed and built by Nikola Tesla over seventy years ago. The galvanic blast stopped Lainie in her tracks. She stiffened in shock, her hair standing on end, toppling backward onto the carpet. The cutlass slipped from her grip.

Myka hurried forward and kicked the sword away from Lainie’s limp fingers. She scowled at the prone tour guide.

“First off,” she said, “I know exactly where Davy Jones’s locker is, and it’s nowhere near the bottom of the ocean.” She nudged Lainie with her toe to make sure she was down for the count. “Second, don’t call me a wench.”

Pete emerged from behind what was left of the mermaid. “Duly noted.”

Myka eyed her partner with amusement. She was an attractive woman, only a few years younger than Pete, with curly auburn hair and dark brown eyes. She lowered the Tesla gun. Now that the immediate threat was over, her voice adopted a more teasing tone.

“‘Bilge rat’?”

“Don’t start.” Pete brushed sawdust from his face and clothes. “What took you so long?”

“I stumbled onto a security guard upstairs. He was lying on the floor in the Sunken Treasure exhibit.” She glanced at Lainie’s unconscious form. “Our Anne Bonny wannabe here had got to him first.”